


North Dakota

by wavewright62



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Character Death but No One You Know, Kinda Sad and a Little Weird, Pre-Canon, Year 0 (Stand Still Stay Silent)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 11:08:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11508171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wavewright62/pseuds/wavewright62
Summary: The Rash reached all corners of the globe, even a remote farm in North Dakota.  Fortunately, so did survival, and the emergence of magic.





	North Dakota

**Author's Note:**

> The serves for the letter N in the Alphabet & Singalong Challenge. It was supposed to be 'Dog', and serve for D, but I got kind of bogged down and decided it would do just as well for N. Did the story benefit from its slow simmer on the back burner? Maybe.  
> Be warned that characters die from the Rash in this story, and I'm sorry for the timing of posting it very shortly after a much-beloved character is affected by the disease in canon. This is not really meant to be an answer to that event in any way.

The sound of barking out in the yard wasn’t too unusual, Duke was known to bark at butterflies and passing clouds. Darcie took notice when Mephistopheles the cat, who had been curled up next to her sleeping, suddenly puffed up, hissed, and dove off the sofa. Laying aside her homework and unfolding herself from the sofa, Darcie padded in her stocking feet to the ranch slider, opened the curtain, and rubbed the condensation off the inside with the sleeve of her sweater. It was later than she thought, it was already twilight and too dark to see out, but she could hear Duke change from barking to whining. Doubly alarmed, she ran to the foyer, stepped into her snow boots and grabbed her parka from the hook as she ran outside.

Duke was facing off against a coyote. He was snarling and cowering at the same time, and Darcie thought he may have taken a hit judging by the way he was slightly favouring a front paw. Perhaps the coyote took a hit as well, its hackles were raised out from its body and its movements were somewhat jerky. She had a clear shot, but of course the rifle was locked in the gun safe, she couldn’t get it in time. She whistled sharply to call the dog to her instead. Duke came sprinting back with his tail between his legs.

The coyote didn’t run off immediately when it saw Darcie, which in itself was unusual enough. It started loping awkwardly after Duke toward the house, circled for a moment, then extended its wings briefly before running away. She can’t have seen that right, she thought; those were just its hackles.

Duke was cowering against the front door. Darcie let him inside and took off her parka, then knelt down to check him out. “Hey, it’s okay, boy, let’s have a look,” she cooed reassuringly at him while she scritched behind his ear. The whites of Duke’s eyes showed as he looked imploringly at her. “Look at that, it’s just a scratch, you big baby.”

She commanded him to sit while she got a cloth to clean out the small cut on Duke’s leg. She’d been reassuring to the dog but inwardly, she was cursing. That coyote was probably rabid. She didn’t get a really good look at it, but that weird loping it was doing wasn’t healthy. Duke had had his shots, but still...

Darcie’s mother came into the kitchen from the workshop. “Darcie, what’s going on? I thought I heard Duke?” She’d done a cursory washing of her hands to get most of the grease off, but pumped hand soap onto them for a more thorough washing.

“Yeah, he got into it with a coyote. Mom, I think the coyote may have been rabid.”

Her mother groaned. “Ohhh, I did NOT need to take time off to take Duke into town tomorrow.” Then shrugging, “I’ll take Mephistopheles while I’m at it, he needs new shots anyway. Could you please dig out the cat carrier?” Darcie thought of the shed outside, piled to its ceiling with assorted _stuff,_ and opened her mouth to whine, but her mother stopped her with a look. “Thank you, sweetie,” she said pointedly.

Darcie gave up and turned to go, then remembered the dark. “Moooommmm, where’s the flashlight?”

Her mother bestowed a smug and demonic smile as she said too sweetly, “Why, I think you left it in the shed, sweetie.”

“Hhrnngh.” Darcie flounced with theatrical dejection back to the foyer, put her parka back on, and called Duke to accompany her as she trudged outside. He obeyed, but his tail was still between his legs as he slunk beside her to the shed. Dark fell quickly on the North Dakota prairie at this time of year, but the stars weren’t out yet. A light snow flurry whisked around her as she opened the shed. She felt around for the flashlight, and a tune from choir came unbidden into her head. “I have decided / to follow Jesus / no turning back / no turning back.”

\----------

"I saw Jason Hollis in town. He had this mask on and hollered at me from across the road. Something about getting ready for the superbugs." Darcie put the bags of groceries on the countertop. Her mother was lying on the sofa with the TV on, and blearily peeked over the edge of the comforter when Darcie came in.

"Oh, honey. You know, he actually believes he saw Elvis stocking up on Fig Newtons and bottled water at Krogers. He's not all there."

"I know, Mom, Elvis would never eat anything as healthy as a Fig Newton. Now, if Jason had said he was stocking up on Chips Ahoy and Sunny D, maybe that I’d believe."

"Yeah," Darcie’s brother David chimed in, "and everybody knows he lives in Michigan, anyway." He sat down on the edge of the sofa where his mother was. “Bleargh. You know, mom, I think I’m getting that flu you’ve got.”

She peered at him. “Oh you’re right, you don’t look so good. Go take your temperature. Oh no, wait, I have it here. Darcie, did you get more of the cough syrup?”

Darcie produced the packets and bottles she’d gotten from the pharmacy. “They didn’t have any more of the cherry kind, but they still had some of this. There wasn’t a lot of stuff left, actually, and they weren’t sure when they’d get more.” She remembered the eerily empty shopping centre, with the early Christmas displays blinking cheerfully to no one. “They were all out of the cream you wanted for that rash, though, mom. Sorry. The man at the drugstore said to try an oatmeal bath if it’s really itchy.” He’d started to say something else to her, but then a coughing fit took hold of him, and Darcie paid for her purchases and hurried away.

“Eww,” David sneered. “Mum, what’s for dinner? Hopefully not oatmeal.”

"Sorry, honey, I'm not feeling up to it right now. I think there’s some TV dinners in the freezer."

"I’ll cook,” Darcie volunteered, “I'll make mac'n'cheese with Cool Whip, okay?" She ventured that the joke would snap her mother out of her lethargy.

"Ya, okay, honey, sounds good," she mumbled as she turned her back to Darcie and pulled the comforter around herself.

David and Darcie exchanged a look. The news came on the TV, and David fished out the remote to turn it off. “Ugh, doom and gloom. Even the weather report is lousy. I don’t care what’s happening in Europe, and I can look up basketball online.”

\------------

“I got a picture of Duke,” David whispered, “look at this.” He held his phone out to Darcie with a hand covered in the Rash. Darcie took the phone gingerly, and braced herself to look at the photo. Duke had been dead for some weeks now. She’d found him by the back stairs, and thought she’d buried him before David could see him. “I uploaded it to the Rashblog site in Iceland. They’re just about the only place left with servers, with English anyway. S’prised I got signal. They’re saying,” but the effort to talk cost him a coughing fit.

Darcie looked at her brother with alarm. He’d lasted longer than their mother had, but Darcie knew the prognosis now, she’d done what research she could. She gazed at the screen. There was poor Duke lying in the foreground, and also- “Hey, there’s Mephistopheles!” The cat had gotten skittish and refused to remain in the house, even with winter imminent upon them. Darcie was pretty sure he was living in the garage now. She sometimes saw him with rats and such, which was just as well since they’d run out of the rationed cat food last week.

“Yeah,” David replied dully. “Cat just hisses at me now, ‘s weird.” Darcie was swiping through the photos on his phone now. Pictures of Duke, pictures of their now-dead mother sick on the sofa, pictures of Darcie in the kitchen, then as she swiped backwards, pictures of their mother and Darcie shucking corn a few months ago, pictures of David’s girlfriend, lots of pictures of David’s girlfriend smiling and pulling faces at the camera. David sighed. “Sh’not answering texts. I think she got the Rash, too.”

\------------------

Darcie checked herself front and back in the mirror every day. She never got even a hint of the Rash, even though it was supposed to be highly contagious. After she’d buried David next to their mother, she had tried to leave the farm, but there weren’t any gas stations open, so she knew she wouldn’t even get out of the state. The roads were clogged with abandoned vehicles, the shopping centre now long since dark and looted. No one had anywhere else they could go. Darcie went home to the empty house, where at least she had some provisions and the water pump and generator still worked. Mephistopheles moved back into the house and slept with Darcie, and only got freaky and puffy sometimes, when he found a rat or something to eat. They conserved their energy while the winter winds howled down the Dakota plains.

\----------------

Spring did come to the North Dakota. Darcie had managed to not die, much to her amazement. Her mother had dutifully canned pickles and vegetables and jam for years which they hadn’t really eaten, and even though some of the seals looked less than wholesome, Darcie was grateful to her mother with each and every jar. The shelves were now mostly filled with carefully washed empty Mason jars.

She sat on the back step in the afternoon sunshine, letting her mind go blank as she’d learned to do, letting the time pass, conserving energy. A shadow fell across her face. “Get up now,” a gruff voice said to her.

Darcie tried to speak, but her voice had grown rusty with disuse, and she only managed a croak. She squinted up at the owner of the voice, but he had the sun behind him. Mephistopheles was watchful but not freaked out.

“It’s time to go,” the voice said, more insistently. “Pack some things, we will walk.” Darcie got up and looked with amazement at her companion. He looked like, well – he looked like a large walking version of her poor dog Duke, but with long black hair braided down its back. “I can explain while we walk.”

It seemed as good a plan as any.

Darcie dug out a backpack and threw some clothing and a blanket into it, as well as a few more things she half-remembered from Girl Scouts long ago, while her companion fretted. She looked around the living room, at the pictures of her family on the walls, and somehow knew she would not be coming back. “Do I need any of this if I’m going to die?,” she asked the dog-man as she held up the backpack.

The dog-man shrugged. “You already didn’t die, it’s not for me to know what you need.”

They walked together down the road leading to the farmhouse, with Mephistopheles following a discreet distance behind them. They reached the highway, with the abandoned trucks and cars becoming more numerous as they walked east. Some of them were torn rather than simply abandoned. There were no signs of any other people who might be surprised by the sight of a dog-man, a girl, and a black cat walking down the road.

As the days passed, Darcie’s companion began to talk. He said his name was Coyote, and had always been Coyote, in the languages of all the people. The People were dead now, Coyote explained, but he’d found her. He could teach her the ways of the People, and she would teach him the ways of her magic, that kept her alive when all the People sickened and died. Darcie said that magic wasn’t real, and she certainly didn’t have any magic, but Coyote was convinced that she must.

Eventually she came to agree with Coyote.

He stayed close to her, even after they found other people in the far-off mountains who had the mostly mastered the knack of not dying. None of them could see Coyote, but he stayed close by her, and her children, and her children’s children in their turn.

**Author's Note:**

> Coyote is the Trickster god from some of the Native American pantheons. If in Minna Sundberg's SSSS world the Norse & Finnish pantheons come back to participate in human affairs, then it stands to reason that other pantheons may also contribute magic to their spheres of influence.  
> Here, I imagine Coyote having their whole people wiped out by the Rash, and finding this one young woman - the trick's on him, perhaps. (That was why I had her whistle a Christian tune.)  
> The coyote with the Rash who infected the poor dog was not Coyote in any guise, it should be noted.
> 
> Cool Whip: for non-American readers - how to describe this substance? - it is officially 'non-dairy whipped topping,' and is an extraordinary triumph of the food scientist's art. I love it unreservedly, even though I know it's an abomination unto Nuggen. I can't get it in New Zealand, and make do with (gasp!) cream that I have whipped myself.
> 
> Thank you (<3) to those of you who have asked me to carry on this story. I am not planning on doing so at this point (and deliberately left the character design vague for this reason) but appreciate that it could easily fill its own book. If you are inspired by this scenario, just credit this source if you want to expand it, thanks. I reserve the right to _also_ expand it at some point in the future.


End file.
